http://www.globalpolicy.org/security/issues/iraq/attack/consequences/2005/1015syria.htm
GI's and Syrians in Tense Clashes on
Iraqi Border
James Risen & David E. Sanger
New
York Times
October 15, 2005
A series of clashes in the last year between American and Syrian
troops, including a prolonged firefight this summer that killed several
Syrians, has raised the prospect that cross-border military operations
may become a dangerous new front in the Iraq war, according to current
and former military and government officials.
The firefight, between Army Rangers and
Syrian
troops along the border with Iraq, was the most serious of the
conflicts with President Bashar al-Assad's forces, according to
American and Syrian officials. It illustrated the dangers facing
American troops as Washington tries to apply more political and
military pressure on a country that President Bush last week labeled
one of the "allies of convenience" with Islamic extremists. He also
named Iran.
One of Mr. Bush's most senior aides, who
declined to be identified
because of the sensitivity of the subject, said that so far American
military forces in Iraq had moved right up to the border to cut off the
entry of insurgents, but he insisted that they had refrained from going
over it.
But other officials, who say they got their
information in the field or
by talking to Special Operations commanders, say that as American
efforts to cut off the flow of fighters have intensified, the
operations have spilled over the border - sometimes by accident,
sometimes by design. Some current and former officials add that the
United States military is considering plans to conduct special
operations inside Syria, using small covert teams for cross-border
intelligence gathering.
The broadening military effort along the
border has intensified as the
Iraqi constitutional referendum scheduled for Saturday approaches, and
as frustration mounts in the Bush administration and among senior
American commanders over their inability to prevent foreign radical
Islamists from engaging in suicide bombings and other deadly terrorist
acts inside Iraq. Increasingly, officials say, Syria is to the Iraq war
what Cambodia was in the Vietnam War: a sanctuary for fighters, money
and supplies to flow over the border and, ultimately, a place for a
shadow struggle.
Covert military operations are among the most
closely held of secrets, and planning for them is extremely delicate
politically as well, so none of those who discussed the subject would
allow themselves to be identified. They included military officers,
civilian officials and people who are otherwise actively involved in
military operations or have close ties to Special Operations forces.
In the summer firefight, several Syrian
soldiers were killed, leading to a protest from the Syrian government
to the United States Embassy in Damascus, according to American and
Syrian officials. A military official who spoke with some of the
Rangers who took part in the incident said they had described it as an
intense firefight, although it could not be learned whether there had
been any American casualties. Nor could the exact location of the
clash, along the porous and poorly marked border, be learned.
In a meeting at the White House on Oct. 1,
senior aides to Mr. Bush considered a variety of options for further
actions against Syria, apparently including special operations along
with other methods for putting pressure on Mr. Assad in coming weeks.
American officials say Mr. Bush has not yet
signed off on a specific
strategy and has no current plan to try to oust Mr. Assad, partly for
fear of who might take over. The United States is not planning
large-scale military operations inside Syria and the president has not
authorized any covert action programs to topple the Assad government,
several officials said. "There is no finding on Syria," said one senior
official, using the term for presidential approval of a covert action
program. "We've got our hands full in the neighborhood," added a senior
official involved in the discussion.
Some other current and former officials
suggest
that there already have been initial intelligence gathering operations
by small clandestine Special Operations units inside Syria. Several
senior administration officials said such special operations had not
yet been conducted, although they did not dispute the notion that they
were under consideration.
Whether they have already occurred or are
still being planned, the goal
of such operations is limited to singling out insurgents passing
through Syria and do not appear to amount to an organized effort to
punish or topple the Syrian government.
According to people who have spoken with
Special Operations commanders,
teams like the Army's Delta Force are well suited for reconnaissance
and intelligence gathering inside Syria. They could identify and
disrupt the lines of communications, sanctuaries and gathering points
used by foreign Arab fighters and Islamist extremists seeking to wage
war against American troops in Iraq.
What the administration calls Syria's
acquiescence in insurgent
operations organized and carried out from its territory is a major
factor driving the White House as it conducts what seems to be a major
reassessment of its Syria policy.
The withdrawal of Syrian troops from Lebanon
earlier this year in the
wake of the assassination in February of Rafik Hariri, the former
Lebanese prime minister, in Beirut led to a renewed debate in the White
House about whether - and how - to push for change in Damascus.
With no clear or acceptable alternative to
Mr. Assad's government on
the horizon, the administration now seems to be awaiting the outcome of
an international investigation of the Hariri assassination, which may
lead to charges against senior Syrian officials. Detlev Mehlis, the
German prosecutor in charge of the United Nations investigation of the
killing, is expected to complete a report on his findings this month.
If Mr. Mehlis reports that senior Syrian officials are implicated in
the Hariri assassination, some Bush administration officials say that
could weaken the Assad government.
"I think the administration is looking at the
Mehlis investigation as
possibly providing a kind of slow-motion regime change," said one
former United States official familiar with Syria policy. The death -
Syrian officials called it a suicide - on Wednesday of Interior
Minister Ghazi Kanaan of Syria, who was questioned in connection with
the United Nations investigation, may have been an indication of the
intense pressure building on the Assad government from that inquiry.
Zalmay Khalilzad, the United States
ambassador to Iraq, issued one of
the administration's most explicit public challenges to Damascus
recently when he said that "our patience is running out with Syria."
"Syria has to decide what price it's willing
to
pay in making Iraq success difficult," he said on Sept. 12. "And time
is running out for Damascus to decide on this issue."
Some hawks in the administration make little secret of their hope that
mounting political and military pressure will lead to Mr. Assad's fall,
despite their worries about who might succeed him. Other American
officials seem to believe that by taking modest military steps against
his country, they will so intimidate Mr. Assad that he will alter his
behavior and prevent Syrian territory from being used as a sanctuary
for the Iraqi insurgency and its leadership.
"Our policy is to get Syria to change its
behavior," said a senior
administration official. "It has failed to change its behavior with
regard to the border with Iraq, with regard to its relationships with
rejectionist Palestinian groups, and it has only reluctantly gotten the
message on Lebanon." The official added: "We have had people for years
sending them messages telling them to change their behavior. And they
don't seem to recognize the seriousness of those messages. The hope is
that Syria gets the message."
There are some indications that this
strategy, described as "rattling
the cage," may be working. Some current and former administration
officials say that the flow of foreign fighters has already diminished
because Mr. Assad has started to restrict their movement through Syria.
But while he appears to be curbing the number
of foreign Arab fighters
moving through Syria, the American officials say he has not yet
restricted former senior members of Saddam Hussein's government from
using Syria as a haven from which to provide money and coordination to
the Sunni-based insurgency in Iraq. "You see small tactical changes,
which they don't announce, so they are not on the hook for permanent
changes," a senior official said about Syria's response. "They are
doing just enough to reduce the pressure in hopes we won't pay
attention, and then they slide back again."
In an interview with CNN this week, Mr. Assad
denied that there were
any insurgent sanctuaries inside Syria. "There is no such safe haven or
camp," he insisted. In this tense period of give and take between
Washington and Damascus, the firefight this summer was clearly a
critical event. It came at a time when the American military in Iraq
was mounting a series of major offensives in the Euphrates Valley near
the Syrian border to choke off the routes that foreign fighters have
used to get into Iraq.
The Americans and Iraqis have been fortifying
that side of the border
and increasing patrols, raising the possibility of firing across the
unmarked border and of crossing it in "hot pursuit." From time to time
there have been reports of clashes, usually characterized as incidental
friction between American and Syrian forces. There have been some quiet
attempts to work out ways to avoid that, but formal agreements have
been elusive in an atmosphere of mutual mistrust.
Some current and former United States
military
and intelligence officials who said they believed that Americans were
already secretly penetrating Syrian territory question what they see as
the Bush administration's excessive focus on the threat posed by
foreign Arab fighters going through Syria. They say the vast majority
of insurgents battling American forces are Iraqis, not foreign jihadis.
According to a new study by the Center for
Strategic and International
Studies, intelligence analysis and the pattern of detentions in Iraq
show that the number of foreign fighters represents "well below 10
percent, and may well be closer to 4 percent to 6 percent" of the total
makeup of the insurgency. One former United States official with access
to recent intelligence on the insurgency added that American
intelligence reports had concluded that 95 percent of the insurgents
were Iraqi.
This former intelligence official said that
in conversations with
several midcareer American military officers who had recently served in
Iraq, they had privately complained to him that senior commanders in
Iraq seemed fixated on the issue of foreign fighters, despite the
evidence that they represented a small portion of the insurgency. "They
think that the senior commanders are obsessed with the foreign fighters
because that's an easier issue to deal with," the former intelligence
official said. "It's easier to blame foreign fighters instead of
developing new counterinsurgency strategies."
Top Pentagon officials and senior commanders have said that while the
number of foreign fighters is small, they are still responsible for
most of the suicide bombings in Iraq. Gen. John P. Abizaid, commander
of United States Central Command, said on Oct. 2 on the NBC News
program "Meet the Press" that he recognized the need to avoid "hyping
the foreign fighter problem."
But he cautioned that "the foreign fighters
generally tend to be people
that believe in the ideology of Al Qaeda and their associated
movements, and they tend to be suicide bombers." "So while the foreign
fighters certainly aren't large in number," he said, "they are deadly
in their application."
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